CHAPTER FIVE

CONCORD AND TOLERATION

In the hot summer of 1672, when the fell prey to a climac- tic combination of foreign assault and internal uproar, Pieter de la Court prepared for escape. The regime of ‘True Liberty’ had fallen apart, the enemy’s armies stood at the borders of Holland – only halted thanks to an improvised realization of De la Court’s plan to protect the province with a large trench – and De la Court himself packed his most valuable belong- ings: jewellery, silver service, pocket-sized Latin books, and a copy of the New Testament with golden clasps, a pious indication of the wise mer- chant’s wealth.1 Shortly thereafter, De la Court fled to , where he would remain for more than a year, killing his time playing trick-track, that favourite pastime of republican exiles, with other refugees like Pieter de Groot.2 When De la Court eventually returned home at the end of 1673, he wisely, if also rather bitterly, decided not to interfere in the political debate again.3 Another pastime called for his attention: his garden at his country estate Meerburg, on the banks of a branch of the Rhine near Leiden. Legend has it that Meerburg was the site where the fijirst European pineapple was cultivated; be that as it may, De la Court’s son, who never proved to be endowed with his father’s sharp political pen, inherited at least some of his enthusiasm, and decades later he would publish a lav- ishly illustrated treatise on the art of horticulture.4

1 See the inventory from 25 June 1672, published as appendix IIIa in Kernkamp (ed.), “Brieven (1667–1685),” 137–140. 2 See the letter of Pieter de Groot to Abraham de Wicquefort, 4 July 1673, in Lettres à Abraham de Wicquefort (1668–1674), ed. F.J.L. Krämer (, 1894), 134. Cf. Machiavelli’s famous letter to Francesco Vettori, 10 December 1513, in Lettere a Francesco Vettori e a Francesco Guicciardini (1513–1537), ed. Giorgio Inglese (Milan: Rizzoli, 2002), 192–196. 3 Cf. the cynical comments in Sinryke Fabulen, 16, where De la Court covertly apolo- gizes for his escape to Antwerp and blames his compatriots for not having listened to his warnings. 4 [Pieter de la Court van der Voort], Byzondere aanmerkingen over het aenleggen van pragtige en gemeene landhuizen, lusthoven, plantagien en aenklevende cieraden (Leiden, 1737). On the mixed fate of the De la Court family in the eighteenth century, see Maarten Prak, Gezeten burgers. De elite in een Hollandse stad, Leiden 1700–1780 ( etc.: De Bataafsche Leeuw, 1985). concord and toleration 285

Yet for De la Court, the days at Meerburg must have had a more profound signifijicance. As Lipsius proclaimed almost a century before, a “delight in Gardens is Commendable; a Pleasure, to which … the Best, and most Ingenuous Men are inclin’d by Nature”. Writing at the height of the religious warfare that shattered his native in the late sixteenth century, Lipsius presented the private world of the secluded garden as a heaven of constancy, a peaceful retreat where one could hide from the turmoil of the public realm and the violent passions of one’s soul. “May my time ever pass away amongst your Shades!” Lipsius addressed his stoic garden. “May it be lawful for me, being deliver’d from the Wild, endless Tumults of the People, with a free, satisfy’d Eye, to wander among these Flowers, of the knowne, and unknown World!”5 De la Court, in the wake of his own turbulent experiences, must have found a similarly serene shelter at Meerburg, far away from the concerns of daily life and the turmoil of politics. But such a stoical retreat still involved a clear political stance: as a place for conversation and debate and as a symbol of both order and variety, Lipsius’s garden embodied a blooming civil society where the roots of dissension and upheaval are rigorously curtailed to cultivate the fruits of harmonious diversity. This image of a stoic garden of concord and constancy represents the De la Courts’ account of how to establish stability and peace in a society characterised by religious conflict and political unrest. As I will argue in this fijifth and fijinal chapter, the brothers De la Court experienced an ‘Erasmian moment’ which involved a strong rejection of revolutionary change, a parallel attack at clerical interference in politics, and a commer- cially inspired commitment to religious freedom. Adopting the Grotian claim that the civil sovereign holds supreme authority over all ecclesiasti- cal afffairs, the De la Courts pleaded for a broad public church overseen by the magistracy, which tolerates confessional dissent in private. This ideology of toleration, in particular for the sake of commercial prosperity, was fairly far-reaching since it also included Catholics. Yet the brothers’ tolerationist stance remained limited by their embrace of a single true faith, based on the purity of Scripture. The inviolability of Scripture also

5 Justus Lipsius, A Discourse of Constancy (London, 1654), 75–77. For a detailed analysis, see Mark Morford, “The Stoic Garden,” Journal of Garden History 7, 2 (1987), 151–175. Pieter de la Court van der Voort owned a copy of the Leiden 1589 edition of De constantia, as well as Lipsius’s Politica (Leiden, 1634) and Opera Omnia (Antwerp, 1637): Library, fols. 15, 20, 31.